From chat to voice

If you're thinking about converting part of your chatbot into a voice bot, make sure to read through these useful tips before you do so.‌

Convert all visible and clickable elements‌

Transform visual elements into auditory cues as your users can't interact with visual interfaces. For instance, instead of displaying a clickable URL, ask if the bot should text the URL to the user's phone for easy access.

Shorten your copy as much as you can‌

To improve user experience, use follow-up questions like "Do you want to hear more about X?" This provides a break from listening. After describing options, ask "Do you want to hear more about option X or Y?" instead of detailing both.

Humans can read up to 300 words a minute but only speak 150, making speaking and listening more cognitively demanding. To ease this, break lengthy information into blocks and include sufficient pauses.

Increase the number of expressions‌

People generally use shorter sentences in writing compared to speaking. When engaging with a voice assistant, users often offer longer sentences and more context. Enhance your assistant's comprehension by incorporating a wider range of expressions and longer phrases.

Use more confirmations‌

With no visual support, the customer cannot scroll back in the conversation to retrieve or check information, so your bot will need to be a bit more hands-on and confirm or repeat (important) information.‌

Anticipate silences‌

If it takes a few seconds for your bot to retrieve information from a backend system, or call up an API, make sure the bot lets the user know that there will be a short silence. Otherwise, the user might think the call is over. Simply have the bot say "One moment please" or "Let me look that up for you. It's a small thing but it goes a very long way when it comes to delivering a great user experience.‌

For example: if someone wants to upgrade their subscription, the bot has to go into that person's data and see which subscription they have right now, which options can be added exactly, what the requirements are to do so, etc. These kinds of API calls are gonna take a while, so here you could add a confirmation message that fills up the time it takes for the bot to pull the right data.‌

After the user has stated they want to upgrade their subscription, instead of asking “what’s your current subscription?” you can buy some time by saying "Okay, so you’d like to upgrade your subscription, right?” and once the user confirms, the bot can say something like “Great, I can help you with that. What’s your current subscription?”. By the time these questions are asked and answered, the bot has pulled the info it needs to seamlessly continue the conversation.